


Eye of the Beholder

by poisontaster



Series: Heart 'Verse [41]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Future Fic, M/M, Reunions, Sam Has Powers, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-13
Updated: 2006-06-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:50:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5997598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art can change lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eye of the Beholder

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to mona1347. (Year 18)

"Aw, Jeez, Sam, I feel like I'm dying here."

"And yet somehow I think you won't be the first person in the history of the world to die from wearing a tie," Sam answers in that infuriatingly calm way he's got.

"It's not just the tie," Dean complains, tugging at the knot. "It's this whole damn monkey suit. I thought that the whole _point_ of this semi-retirement gig was so we didn't have to play dress-up anymore. And actually, I did know this one guy, he had this thing, like this tie fetish, and he…"

"Oh God, Dean, stop now. Please. And quit fussing with it, you're gonna fuck it up." Sam smacks his hands and then wanders into the bathroom.

"No, wait, but it's a really good story…" Dean starts to follow Sam.

"Dad?"

"That can wait for another time," Dean says smoothly, turning around. Chelsea's standing in the bedroom doorway in her new (and outrageously expensive, if you ask him, which no one did, but still…) dress of white and purple gauze. "Hey kiddo, you look great." He elbows Sam in the side as Sam emerges from the bathroom smelling like honest to goodness cologne. Dean has the momentary impulse to push his face into the soft skin behind Sam's ear and inhale. "Doesn't she look great?"

"Da-ad," Chelsea groans, but he thinks she looks pleased anyway.

"Beautiful," Sam seconds, putting on his suit coat and Chelsea blushes.

"Aw, thanks, Stepmonster," she says, which just goes to show how screwed up the dynamics in this family are.

***

"I don't know why we're doing this anyway," Dean grumbles as he juggles car door, cane, and the back of the passenger side seat to climb up. "I mean…since when are we interested in art?"

"I'm interested," Chelsea says primly. She's got a purse too, a little thing of white patent leather and despairingly, Dean wonders how long it's going to be before he gets overruled on the 'no make-up' and 'no boys' issues too. Parenthood by democracy really sort of sucks hardcore. She bounces in the middle of the back seat, already seat belted in.

"I'm interested too," Sam says, climbing in the driver's side and relieving Dean of his cane so that Dean can swing into the seat. "And besides, you owe me."

"I owe you?" Dean repeats incredulously.

"You owe me." Sam nods. "Last week. You told me if I…" Sam makes a strangled noise suddenly, glancing up in the rearview at Chelsea. "If I _did that favor for you_ , then you'd do anything I want. Well, I want."

"Did that favor…?" Dean's eyebrows go up suddenly as he remembers the exact circumstances under which Sam had extracted that promise. He glances back at Chelsea too, but she seems oblivious, bopping slightly to the Danzig coming from the speakers, singing under her breath. That's his girl. To Sam he says, "You cannot _honestly_ expect any promise I made to you while I had my… _under duress_ is valid. And wait…you've been planning this that long?"

Sam's chin tips up at that angle that means he's being stubborn. "You said it, I'm holding you to it," he says.

"But…an art show?" Dean's not above whining, particularly if it'll get him out of something.

"Dean." Sam puts his hand over Dean's, thumb stroking across Dean's knuckles. "You're going to like this. Trust me."

Dean sighs. He hates it when Sam says that; it means he _has_ to do whatever cock-eyed thing Sam wants or suffer the consequences. And Sam's both evil and inventive with stuff like that. "All I'm saying is that I'd better get another—ahem— _favor_ out of this."

Sam slants him an amused glance. "Yeah, we'll see what we can do about that."

***

"You know we could have parked down the street and it would have been _free_ ," Dean says pointedly as Sam hands off the key to the valet. His leg aches from the drive.

"God Dad, you are so cheap," Chelsea chides, putting her hand in Dean's as they walk towards the gallery entrance. "Live a little."

"I bet I could be living a lot better with that twenty back in our…oh _no way_!" Dean draws up short at the placard announcing the show. He looks over at Sam. "Is it really?"

Sam nods and Chelsea looks at the placard. "Visual Etymology, a show by Lucas Barr," she reads. She looks up at Dean. "Do you know him, Dad?"

"Yeah, if it's the same kid I'm thinking of."

"Well, hardly a kid anymore," Sam observes. "Your dad saved his life, once."

"Did you really?" Chelsea's voice hovers somewhere between impressed and skeptical.

"It was a very long time ago," Sam adds and Chelsea looks mollified. Dean jabs Sam in the arm.

***

Lucas Barr. It had been a very long time since Dean had even thought of Lucas, but he had a pretty good memory for names and faces and Lucas had been a very special little boy.

Which is why, when a tall dude with reddish hair in a mop to rival Sam's, walks up to him and says, "I'm guessing you won't remember me," Dean can say with absolute truthfulness, "Actually I do, Lucas, how're you doing?"

Lucas's smile is as shy as ever and though his face has aged and thinned out, his eyes are the same too. He makes an awkward and open armed gesture at Dean, then checks himself. "I…can I?"

Dean can't quite get used to this part. He's fine with the remembering, but still feels that reflexive worry/suspicion at _being_ remembered. Because really, in the past when did that ever lead to anything good? More than that, he can't quite get used to people feeling grateful, or even pleased to see him. He's also used to people being put off by his missing eye. Still, Sam and Mike's patient coaching have given him the presence of mind to step into Lucas's hug, patting the other man awkwardly on the back.

"It's good to see you," Lucas says. "I didn't think I ever would again. Not until Sam called."

"Sam called?" Dean turns his head to look where Sam and Chelsea are examining one of Lucas's canvases. Chelsea points to something on the picture and laughs. "That rat-bastard sneak."

"Lucas." A blonde in a severe brown suit and glasses comes up to them. She's got the impatient and disdainful look of a very pretty woman who uses her clothes and tight, upswept hair as a defense to be taken seriously. "Dr. MacColl was looking for you. He'd like to discuss your next show with you."

She hardly glances in Dean's direction, but he leers anyway, just on general principles. He likes to keep his hand in. Lucas holds up a finger. "With you in a minute, Kelly."

"He's not going to wait long," she mutters in a pissed off sing-song, but she moves reluctantly away.

"Look, I've got to do this thing," Lucas apologizes, gesturing. "But Sam said something about dinner afterwards. I'm really looking forward to it."

"Dinner?" Dean squeaks. Oh, _man_. He's going to be in this suit for _hours_

***

"Aren't we getting a little old for bathroom trysts?" Sam asks. His eyebrows rise as Dean pushes him into a stall.

Just for that, Dean shoves him into the wall and bites and chews at Sam's neck until Sam's making whining little breathless noises and riding Dean's thigh. "Fuck you, too old," he says with some satisfaction, panting a little as he pulls back. "And don't ever use the word tryst, man."

"If I take back every single word I just said, will that get you to finish what you just started?" Sam asks in complete seriousness, tugging at Dean's lapels and shifting distractingly against him.

"Chelsea's waiting." Dean wipes his mouth, though Sam's still doing wicked circles with his hips on Dean's thigh.

"Chelsea's with Lucas. You didn't think I'd leave her alone, did you?"

"That's what worries me," Dean answers. "Sam, Lucas knows us. I mean, he knows us from before."

And sometimes even Dean's got to marvel at all the euphemisms they have for the shit they avoid talking about like plague. _Before_ is shorthand for _when people knew we were brothers_.

It's been a long time since Dean's referred to Sam as his brother anywhere but in his head or dancing around it in conversations like these. They're careful. They have to be.

He can see the shadow of it in Sam's eyes too, the weight of this secret that forms the backbone of their life. It had been risky with Mike, who'd been so determined to barge his way into their life that he was willing to maintain careful ignorance about exactly who or what they were to each other. Lucas is an unknown quantity, though.

"It's okay," Sam says, hand on Dean's shoulder as if to steady him, which…okay, maybe Dean does need it a little. "I talked to Lucas."

"What does that mean, _'I talked to Lucas'_?" Dean hisses, horrified and terrified by turns.

"Not like that. Not with…details or anything. I just told him it might not be safe to talk about that. I sort of implied it would be dangerous for us." Sam grimaces.

"Which it is."

Sam shrugs, and again Dean sees that vague uncomfortable unhappiness. Sam's a great liar when he wants to be, but he hates it and he hates that it's necessary even more. Dean wishes he could do something to take it away or fix it. Anything except give up Sam, that is, because that boat has sailed. "Which it is," Sam agrees. "But I just sort of…let him think I meant physically dangerous. He seemed to take it in stride."

Dean sags against the other side of the stall. "Well thank God for that, I guess."

"Yeah." Sam cradles Dean's head to either side, his forehead touching Dean's and their breath mingling. "I wouldn't change it, Dean. I'm not sorry. You…you're not sorry, are you?"

Dean rolls his eyes, but he unbends enough to drag Sam down by the nape of his neck and fasten onto Sam's lips. "You're an idiot," he tells Sam afterwards, swiping the tip of his tongue one last time across those spit-wet, swollen, red lips. "But you're _my_ idiot."

***

About halfway through the event, Dean ditches the tie. If teenaged twinks can come in purple tights and silver feathered boas, he does _not_ need to be this dressed up. He suspects deep conspiracies. Sam rolls his eyes but Dean notices that before too long, Sam's tie is also balled up and shoved into a pocket, his collar unbuttoned to the mole on his collar bone and the hickey from the bathroom standing out defiantly reddish even against Sam's brown skin. Chelsea glares at him from across the room when she spots it and mouths a scandalized, _"Dad!"_.

Dean tries to look contrite, but totally fails, grinning back at her until she rolls her eyes. Most of the time when he looks at her, he sees himself or little bits of Chance, but every once in a while, he sees Sammy, through and through. Like that stick up her butt. Total Sammy.

After a while, Dean gets bored enough to actually start looking at the pictures. He doesn't know anything about art, not even, really, what he likes. Art means having walls to hang it on and up until fairly recently, that wasn't his thing. He still can't quite get used to it and Sam's yelled at him more than once for thumb-tacking stuff to the walls. He doesn't really know if he likes Lucas's stuff and he suspects there's supposed to be some whole deeper meaning to all of it that's evading him. But what he _can_ do is look at it and see a straight line from the crayon drawings of ten-year old Lucas to these more adult and— _Jesus!_ —far more expensive models. And something about that pleases him.

***

By the end of the exhibition, Chelsea has a crush.

By the end of the night, Dean thinks Lucas might too. "I was really glad when Sam called," Lucas admits with a half-smile, tracing the stem of his wine glass with a fingertip that still has paint under the ragged nail.

The thing about desire is that no matter what economic, racial, social-sexual background you're coming from, it's all the same. And Dean knows what it looks like when he sees it. Because that _was_ his thing, his particular art, other than the hunting. So he shifts uncomfortably in his chair and asks instead, "How's your mom?"

Lucas's head ducks and he shrugs. "She didn't… She didn't handle it so well, afterwards," he says. "I think sometimes…she felt like she had to trade Grandpa and Dad for me." His eyes come up then, defiant and blistered like he's daring Dean to say something about it. Like Dean's not surrounded every day by the multitudes who lost the Happy Families game—not only lost, but got hip-checked, flagrantly fouled, shin-kicked, shivved and hustled out the back door—including himself and Sam.

"My Dad would trade anybody in the world for me," Chelsea states matter-of-factly. She is very conscious of the privilege of _staying up late with the grown-ups_ , sitting straight in her chair and toying with the straw in her Shirley Temple in what Dean recognizes as an echo of himself. "Well." She looks sideways, pink coming up in her cheeks. "Except maybe Sam."

It's the right thing to say, or at least, it's enough to break the stretching moment of tension. They laugh and Lucas sits back in his chair, shoulders relaxing down from up around his ears. Under the table, Sam's knee rubs against Dean's constant and soothing.

"Anyway, she's living in Arizona now," Lucas says more easily. "She and Rob—that's my stepdad—have a real nice house out in Wenden. I'm usually traveling too much to get out there often."

"It sounded like you're really starting to get a reputation for yourself," Sam says.

Lucas brightens even more. "Yeah, I've been really lucky. Just a kind of…right time right place scenario, you know?"

"I really liked your pictures, Mr. Barr," Chelsea said. "You're really really good. I especially liked the picture of my Dad and Sam with the baby."

"You can call me Lucas," he says. "Mr. Barr…always feels kind of weird."

"Wait…what?" Dean twitches and tips his beer bottle over. His reflexes are still good enough that he catches it before it hits the table, but a blurt of it spills and foam starts to ooze from the lip. "What picture?"

Sam's eyes have a kind of warning in them, but Dean can't tell what it is. Sam's knee presses against his a little harder than before.

"Oh." Lucas laughs and his ankle slides against Dean's other leg. Dean thinks it's mostly accidental. "That was actually one of the things I wanted to talk to you guys about. I… I have sort of a problem. I thought maybe you could help me."

***

Lucas's hotel is about ten minutes from the restaurant. Full of steak and shrimp cocktail and before that, strawberries from the buffet at the exhibition, Chelsea is sleepy and Dean worries about what Chance is going to say about keeping her out all hours of the night.

Sam carries her up to Lucas's room, murmuring soft promises that they won't stay long. Lucas stands just a little too close to Dean and Dean pretends he doesn't notice. This is kind of weird for him. Sam's eased up on the jealousy at Dean's flirting over the years and Dean has cut back some, but Dean's never been confronted with anyone he's wanted to flirt with less than Lucas nor someone who's wanted Dean to flirt with him more. Which…doesn't make much sense when Dean thinks about it, but he realizes that Lucas occupies that tiny contingent of _untouchables_ in his mind. Someone too special, or delicate or just plain young to bother with.

And really, even if he _is_ nearly thirty, Dean still thinks of Lucas as all three. But he also doesn't want to be a dick about it, which is why he stands still and just kind of concentrates on twirling his cane around in his hand and the phantom ache in his leg.

By his own admission, Lucas has been in town for less than a week but already the room is a disaster area of papers and pens and bottles of ink, sticks of charcoal and colored wax, a huge box of crayons and another like a fishing tackle box, but full of and stained with paint in various colors. Canvases, turned face-in, are scattered around the wall, stacked two and three thick.

Sam settles Chelsea on the bed and Lucas goes to the closet to bring down the extra blanket. Dean takes her shoes off and they put the blanket over her and then he and Sam settle on the bed's edge while Lucas rummages through the mess on the dinette.

"Obviously the finished prints are at the show," he explains, but I still have the sketches. And…I have all the paintings that were too… The ones I couldn't alter." He comes back with a large sketchbook in either hand, both bound by rubber bands to hold in the papers that have been shoved in at random between the pages.

"What do you mean, alter?" Sam asks, holding out his hand. Lucas gives him one of the books, Dean the other.

Lucas rakes a hand through his hair. He looks lost and uncertain, the delicacy Dean had noted before. "Some of them I can change. The image. If I concentrate."

Dean takes the rubber band off and starts paging through the pictures. They're all hasty; quick, jagged, impressionistic lines that dig deep into the paper, tearing through in places, as if Lucas's life had depended on rendering them. Dean's not sensitive or—according to Sam, anyway—particularly perceptive, but just touching the rough paper, smudged with Lucas's fingerprints and wavy edged with handling he'd swear he can feel the emotion that permeates them, desperation, fear, pain.

"Dean," Sam says quietly, and Dean looks over at the picture Sam's holding between his hands.

It's…fuck. The sketchbook falls out of his hands. He can't even feel it, he's not even here. Because for a moment, he's _back there_. In the Impala, with the smell of gas and blood filling his nostrils in about equal measure and Sam's bloody fucked up face turned towards him so far that at first he thinks Sam's neck has to be broken.

_Sam… Sammy…_

"Dean."

"Sam." Sam's tone is so ordinary, so matter-of-fact that answering is a reflex; he can't help it. And like the illusion it is, the sense-memory dispels and he's in the hotel room with Sam's hand on his shoulder and Lucas looking at him with starving eyes.

"You… How did you…? _Why?_ " Dean cringes at the naked plaintive note in his voice, but he's still fazed by the picture, by the memory.

"It wasn't like that, at first," Lucas whispers. "I tried… I tried to change it _more_ , but I just couldn't. I couldn't change it enough."

And now that he's looking for it, Dean can see—like some kind of optical illusion—the original image somehow behind the actual—Sam's neck twisted far, far past the ability of the spine to withstand, himself empty- and glassy-eyed, bled out and lifeless. Dad…

Dean shoves the picture away and it flutters like a dried leaf to the floor.

"I tried," Lucas says again, his voice cracking and flawed.

"I know," Sam answers, quiet and soothing. Which is good, because Dean is incapable of offering anything in the way of comfort to anyone just now. He thought… It was _over_. Behind them. For good. Forever. And in the end he'd still had Sam and that had to be good enough. It _is_ good enough. But this…

"I know you did, Lucas. We're…we're grateful to have even this much."

Grateful? _Grateful?_

"But you have to admit, its something of a shock."

"Y-Yes," Lucas stammers, sinking to the floor and sitting cross-legged like a child. "Yes, I get that. I… I'm sorry."

"What else?" someone asks, a dry croak. It takes Dean a minute to realize it's him. Sam and Lucas look at him and he asks again, "What else is there?"

Lucas sighs and rubs a hand through his hair again. When his jacket cuff slides back to expose his wrist, this time Dean catches a glimpse of scar tissue, pale and old. Then he slides to his knees and retrieves the sketchbook Dean dropped and places it back into Dean's nerveless grip.

"This," he says, indicating a picture of a woman bathing an infant, "is Carmen Del Fiorzo and her daughter Estelle. I actually met her, when it was all over. Originally, Carmen was holding Estelle, drowned. Dead. But I changed the lines, here and here, pulled down a bit of shadow and blurred the angles, there."

He flips to the next picture, a boy playing in a sandbox. In the background is the usual panoply of passers-by, including a woman walking a savage looking dog on a chain. "I don't know what his name is, or where he lives, but in the original, the dog wasn't on a leash," Lucas says, sounding tired and dull, sick almost to death. And maybe that's not entirely inaccurate. "It…it savaged him. He died."

More pictures. More names and snapshot realities, changed by the altering of a line or angle, simple additions and subtractions to make something just different _enough_.

"Lucas, I don't… I don't understand." Dean's head aches and he rubs his scar reflexively, just where it crosses his eyebrow.

"I don't want it," Lucas says, his voice and face hardening. "I…I just want it _gone_ , even if…even if I never paint another stroke, never… I just want it gone. Please…tell me you can help me. Tell me you can make it go away."

Dean didn't get where he is by flinching. More than once in his life he's wanted to back down from the really hard shit—demons and death and losing Sam—and he's never let himself do it. It's part of who he is; someone too stubborn to die, too stupid to quit. Even so, it takes everything in him to meet that bare-wire desperation in Lucas's wide haunted eyes; to face that unshakable wild belief that he—Dean Winchester, royal fuck up—can somehow make this right.

Sam's shaking his head. "It doesn't work like that, Lucas. This isn't…" He puts a hand on Lucas's shoulder, only to have Lucas flinch away, his eyes never leaving Dean's face. "It's not a ghost, or spirit that's doing this to you. You have a gift."

"A gift." Lucas scoffs, and it breaks in the middle.

"A gift," Sam repeats more firmly, finally drawing Lucas's gaze. Dean inhales sharply, feeling like it's his first breath in minutes. "It's a talent, Lucas. An amazing, horrifying talent."

"Huh. Horrifying is more like it." Lucas settles back on his heels. "Do you know what it's like? To see nothing but dead people? People in pain, people in anger, in hate? People at their absolute worst? Not even knowing who they are? How to find them?"

"Yeah," Sam say levelly. "I do."

Dean doesn't care any more what Lucas thinks of them or what Lucas might say. He reaches out and puts his hand over Sam's where it rests on the bedspread. Sam's fingers twitch slightly, but it's the only outward sign either of them gives.

"I just want it gone," Lucas says yet again, plaintively.

Again Sam shakes his head. "I think…I think we could help you with it. Help you…channel it better, maybe. Refine your focus. But it's not going to go away. It just…they don’t go away. You just either learn to deal with them or you let them kill you."

Dean's fingers tighten over Sam's and Sam's flex in silent reply. Lucas turns his face away and for a moment Dean wishes they could go back to the relatively simple sweetness of Lucas just having a crush on him.

"This is what we _do_ now," Sam says. "There… There are more of us like you than you would think."

Dean sees the tremor go through Lucas at that. "Lucas," he says finally. He's got no idea what he's going to say, but he feels impelled to say _something_. He might not have seen Lucas in almost two decades, but you don't stop feeling responsible. Lucas looks up at him, still suffused with that glow of belief and half-cocked passion. "You don't have to be alone. That's the important thing. It's not just you. It doesn't have to be just you."

Lucas covers his face in his hands, shoulders bowing and shaking. "I'm just so tired," he whispers.

This part Dean _does_ know, reenacted in a hundred different motel rooms and bedrooms over the course of the last twenty years. Awkwardly, because of his leg, he reaches and grabs hold of Lucas's shoulder. Lucas doesn't want to unbend, but after a moment, he melts and softens against Dean's knee like wax left too long in the sun, sobbing in near-silence while Dean pats his shoulder.

Sam is looking at him and Dean gives him the eyebrow that says clearly, _Say one word and I will hurt you severely._

Sam rolls his eyes, but his hand turns to clasp Dean's fingers.

***

Afterwards, when Lucas pulls himself away and together, they tell him about the school.

"I don't…" Lucas's voice is thick and choked. He scrubs his face with his sleeve, looking very much like his ten year old self. "I don't know how often I can get away. The shows…"

Dean shrugs. "Come when you can. Call when you can't. It doesn't have to be hard, Lucas."

Lucas nods.

"You gonna be okay?" Sam asks, gathering Chelsea into his arms again. She is soundly asleep—something she must get from Chance—and doesn't even murmur, head lolling against Sam's chest. "Do you want… You could come back with us tonight, if you want. In the morning, you could meet everyone."

Lucas shakes his head. "I don't think…" He chafes his wrist with his off hand, and Dean thinks of those ridges of scar tissue, old enough to have faded pale. "No. Thank you. I'll be fine."

"Come to lunch," Dean offers. "Most of the kids are going to be playing track-hunt-kill up in the hills anyway." _Less overwhelming,_ he thinks but doesn't say, because that's just not the Dean Winchester thing to do. He starts to struggle up from the bed's edge and Lucas puts out a hand to help him. On his feet again, Dean doesn't release Lucas's hand right away, instead turning their conjoined fingers to expose Lucas's wrist. He pushes the sleeve back to again expose the old injuries and drops his voice to exclude Sam. "You don't have to be alone," he says again.

Lucas nods stiffly and drops Dean's hand, drawing back.

"Come to lunch," Dean says a second time.

A second nod, slightly less jerky. "Okay."

***

"You still feel responsible for him, don't you?" Sam asks later, after Chelsea has been returned to her mother without mishap and they've gone to bed. Sam levers up on one elbow, his other hand smoothing from Dean's lower belly to just over his heart.

Dean shrugs. "I don't know. Some, I guess. I never thought about it before."

"Thought about what?"

"The after. What happened to him—or any of them—after we left. I guess I did a little when Mike showed up, because… Because."

"And now you're wondering if you should've?" Sam's face tilts into the angle of Dean's neck, his dry lips tickling across Dean's stubble, followed by the wet curl of his tongue.

"Something like that." Dean's eyes close and he shifts on the mattress, feeling heat start to gather under his skin. He strokes a line down the center of Sam's spine and feels Sam inhale sharply against his damp skin, arching.

Sam throws a leg over Dean's, thigh riding comfortably against Dean's groin and his mouth nibbles a line across Dean's jaw and cheek to finally close over Dean's mouth. For a while, there's only that—Sam's lips and tongue and sharp wicked teeth, Sam's hips writhing against his, ticklish and wanting and slow. Then Sam pulls back, palming Dean's head in his hands. "If we'd spent that much time looking back we would have never gotten anything else done," he says. "We didn't bring the darkness into their lives, we killed what we could and the rest is up to them."

"I know." Dean is concentrating on sliding Sam's boxers over the curve of his ass, but he knows what Sam's saying is true. "Just doesn't mean it doesn't feel like shit sometimes, you know?"

Sam's only answer is the return of his lips to Dean's, tongue stabbing deep and silencing all other conversation.

***

Lucas doesn't come for lunch.

Instead, a courier brings an enormous crate of plywood and a note. Dean has to admit, the best part of irredeemably screwing up his leg is that he gets to fob a lot of the heavy lifting off on Sam. Which is how it should have always been; the prerogative of older siblings. So while Sam gets the crowbar and opens the crate, Dean opens the envelope.

_Dean and Sam,_

_I know what you said. And in my heart, I think I always knew that there wasn't anything I could do about this thing in my head, this eye that sees things I never wanted, takes me places I'm scared to go. And it's funny; even after all this time, I still remember what you said. About being brave. When it would get really really bad, I'd think about that. Sometimes it was "my dad would want me to be brave", but more often, it was "Dean would want me to be brave". And I did think about it all the time. Every day._

_I don't think I'm ready to face a lot of people right now. This is still too weird for me. Too private. I'm not ready to stand up in front of a bunch of people and say 'this is who I am'. I'm okay, I just… Someday I will come and I'll visit and I'll try and wrap my head around this notion of 'gift'. But just…not today._

_I wanted you to have this, though. It always should have been yours and I wanted to somehow show you. That it's not all bad. Sometimes the things I see…they're beautiful. And the truth is, I don't really know who I would be without it. So that's a step, right?_

_~Lucas_

"What is it?" Dean asks as Sam hauls a brown paper wrapped oblong from the packing material inside the crate.

Sam rips the paper away carefully. "It's the picture from the show," he answers finally. "The one of us."

He turns it around. It _is_ them, looking much the same as they do now. Sam is sprawled out in the arm chair, head thrown back and mouth open, profoundly asleep. Dean is similarly asleep on the couch, and on his chest is an infant, one small fist shoved in its mouth.

Dean cocks his head at it, confused. "I don't get it," he says finally. "We weren't around when Chelsea was a baby. The school didn't even exist then."

"Hmmm." Sam props the painting against the coffee table and comes to sit with Dean at the dining room table. "I've been meaning to talk to you about that."

"Oh God," Dean says, leaning back in his chair and taking a swig of his Coke. "You're not pregnant, are you?"

He means it sarcastically but Sam scratches the back of his neck in that _I really don't want to tell you this_ way he's got and Dean feels unaccustomed nervousness skitter down his spine.

"You're shitting me, right? You are _not_ pregnant. We have _not_ slipped that deep in the Twilight Zone."

Sam scowls at him. "No, I'm not pregnant, you moron. I've just been thinking about it a lot lately…"

"About getting pregnant? Because in case you hadn't noticed, Sammy, despite your propensity to bottom, you're actually quite…"

 _"Dean, will you shut the fuck up for five minutes!"_ Sam shouts and Dean sort of does, if only out of sheer surprise. He isn't quite sure when the moment tipped over into _really fucking serious_ , but obviously it had. "I've been thinking about this a lot," Sam repeats, looking at his hands so that all Dean can see is the dark feathery line of his eyelashes. "I've been kind of thinking…that I'd like kids of my own. Or _a_ kid."

Dean blinks. And then blinks again. "Well…fuck me," he says finally, in the absence of anything better.

Sam cracks a smile, nervous and tense and sidelong. "I'd love to, but that doesn't really help me with the problem at hand."

"I don't know what you want me to say, here, Sam."

Sam shrugs. "Yes? No? Maybe a 'hell, no'? Maybe just what you think?"

Dean spreads his hands. "Pretty much blank on the thinking front here, man."

Sam slumps in the chair a little, still not looking up from the locked tangle of his fingers. His thumb circles the whitish scar where he once got a fishhook through the meaty part between forefinger and thumb. Dean remembers cutting it out, slippery with Sam's blood so that he kept fumbling while Sam bit his lip, not crying. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

"Sam." That gets him a look. In Sam's eyes, he sees the same half-hidden lingering unhappiness of a couple years ago, when Sam seemed like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. "I'm not…" Dean sighs. "I'm not saying 'no', here. I'm not saying _anything_. I've had, like…thirty seconds to wrap my brain around this. Give me a second here. I'm not as smart as you, remember?"

That gets him a smile, however half-hearted. "Yeah. No, you're right. I didn't… I didn't mean to spring this on you. It's just, like I said. I've been thinking about it, and then when I saw Lucas's painting… It's not that I don't love Chelsea," Sam says hastily. "You know I love her like she's mine…"

Dean makes a _yeah, yeah_ gesture. He does know. "Is that why you wanted to go to the show?"

Sam shrugs, a little embarrassed. "It was one reason. I couldn't think of how to talk to you about it. I thought maybe…"

Dean looks at the painting again, tilting his head to look at the scrunched up face of the sleeping baby. It doesn't really look like Sam, but at that age, he's never noticed they look like much of anybody. It would seem Lucas has already made up his mind as to how this would go; Sam too. Parenthood by democracy all over again. "Shit, Sam, I don't know. You really want this?"

Sam's gnawing on his lip, which really is Dean's job, dammit. "Yeah. I do."

"And…what about our track record has shown me to be particularly good about telling you 'no' about anything?" Sam shrugs, but Dean sees something leap up behind Sam's eyes, a bright bounding flash that looks a lot like happy. "I don't know, man. Sure. What the hell. Let's figure it out."

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't expect the way this story sort of slipped sideways on me. mona1347 and I had talked about various people who could potentially tie back into Heart 'verse—Mike, the kid from "Something Wicked", Rose, the baby from "Salvation", and later, Lucas, the kid from "Dead in the Water". 
> 
> So, as I'm like to do, I sat and pondered on it for a while. And thought about Lucas and the after. The part that comes after the heroes have left and moved onto greener pastures. And I rewatched Dead in the Water. And then I talked to Mona again:
> 
> _I have this weird protobunny of Sam dragging Dean to an art exhibition. And Dean whining because it's SO not his scene. But then they get there and Dean realizes it's Lucas (which Sam knew the whole time). And Lucas invites them to his hotel and he shows them all these pictures he travels with. The ones that don't make it into the show because they're prophetic in some sense..._
> 
> And so I started on this vaguely sweet, vaguely comedic idea of Sam and Dean bickering at this art exhibition and everything was great until I actually introduced Lucas. And Lucas was suddenly crushing on Dean. And Lucas was sad. Really, truly sad. And somewhere in there was the realization that he really truly hates his gift; that it's brought him nothing but pain and that this could be Sam.
> 
> One of the things I think (and hope) will come to bear in the series is the idea that life really doesn’t take you to the places you expect a lot of the time, and that—even if he quits hunting (which we know he won't)—Sam is going to have to come to terms with his gift. He's going to have to learn to accept this piece of himself that's contrary to everything he ever wanted. And he can go two ways with it; he can get bitter and angry and rail against fate, or he can shrug his shoulders and learn to deal with what life throws at him. And for obvious reasons, I chose the latter. 
> 
> I really like the Sam in this particular fanon I have here; he's made his choices and he abides by them and while he's still stubborn as all get-out, he's also learned to accept a lot of the small stuff with a more Zen attitude.
> 
> But that doesn't mean that everyone else in Sam's situation would do the same. Particularly without someone like Dean to stand by them through it. And without that strong presence—familial or romantic—I can see someone like Lucas being kind of cast adrift. Especially in a chosen profession like art. 
> 
> I really wanted Lucas to show up at the end; I wanted a happier ending to this in that sense, but Lucas politely declined and from a quasi-omniscient POV, I understand the reasons why. Lucas isn't ready for Heart 'verse. He's too fractured and too shadowed, drawn in on himself. So for as much as I wanted Lucas to come to lunch and have a great time and have that sort of happy-ever-after, it wasn't really true to the story. 
> 
> But that left me without an actual ending.
> 
> Now the idea that Sam wants a child or children of his own is actually one I've had for a long while. And while Sam—and I—have tried to frame this to Dean on several occasions, it never quite made it to paper (or screen, as it were). And when I started this story, I had absolutely no intention of rolling it around to that topic. Sam, it would seem, had plans of his own (he is a really impatient bastard that way).
> 
> It started in the gallery with Sam and Chelsea looking at a picture across the gallery from Dean. And when Chelsea points at it and laughs, I somehow knew that the subject of the picture was Sam, Dean, and Prospective Baby. But Dean being Dean, he never quite made it around to the picture, and I thought that it would just be one of those little details that I would know, but no one else would. Well, then Chelsea brought it up at dinner. And I went, "…bzuh?" But then the scene ended and again, it was just a sort of thread hanging out there. And I hate hanging threads. But I couldn't seem to make the story come around to it.
> 
> By the time Lucas was telling me that he wasn't going to lunch, I knew he was going to give the painting to Sam and Dean. And I realized—for the first time—that the painting (and the attendant desire behind it) was one of the reasons Sam had dragged Dean into this in the first place. Because he really didn't know how to bring up the topic. 
> 
> More than that, though, I realized that Sam's quasi-selfish (and I use selfish only because he wants for himSELF) desire to get Dean on-board with the kid idea was really sort of serendipitous because whether Lucas is ready for Heart 'verse or not, a part of him needed to know it was there. The possibility of understanding and acceptance and—more importantly—hope. And that make a circle that really really pleases me, because in my sekrit un-jaded heart, that's the way I'd like to believe the world really works, the wiring under the floorboards, as it were.


End file.
